u/splodey89

I have been seeing more and more things made with AI, and seen a lot of comments on how it would be better to get free stock images and assets from the internet.

how is downloading stock royalty free images off the internet different from generating AI images? either way no-ones getting paid for the assets. I'm not asking to be a smart-a I'm genuinely curious about why its an issue so many people have. especially when people see stock images they get way less offended. AI is a sign of a low quality production, but stock images and free assets on itch.io isn't?

in my opinion its like using a sewing machine. why would i hand stich a dress with a 2 week deadline when i have a sewing machine. or why would i use a hammer and chisel to make a hole in a concrete wall if I have a drill? AI is just a more advanced tool that requires far less skill to use. (like a sewing machine or a drill) again I'm not trying to be a smart-A$$ I'm just not understanding the logic behind a lot of peoples thinking.

please, let me know why you personally have an issue with AI, but not (non AI)stock images from the web. or even why you think AI is better if that's your opinion.
I'm really curious to here all your responses.

EDIT: this is a highly controversial topic and i want to thank you so much for all your responses in helping me understand the issues a lot of people have with AI.

I have learned that people have an issue with AI because it skims the internet for images to "copy" from. while not technically correct, its not wrong either and I see the issue. an artist will "copy" images until they establish their own style, this is true and how we as humans learn to do anything. same as AI however an artist may only study 20,000 images in there entire career verses AI which can study billions of images in a month. this creates a morality issue because a human studying an artist work may only study one or two of their pieces, take what they like and move on. where AI takes all of it, every detail of every image an artist has through an entire career. This is morally grey and worthy of a lot of hate. It does what humans do but on an insane scale. now add the issue that AI isn't intelligent. it cant determine what's right or wrong, it only knows what its human creators "taught it" and in almost every case that means it was trained on millions+ worth of data that a human couldn't possibly sift through in an entire life time. this creates the illusion of "steeling" which is only true if AI was taught on datasets what are behind paywalls and other sources that require money for viewership or sights that strictly deny the use of dataset skimming. sadly this does happen and that IS stealing.

i appears people are also concerned about resource issues. but I do know for a fact AI uses no more resources than car production.

so in my conclusion. AI vs stock images.
stock images are taken with purpose and design, even if downloaded for free no attribution required. meaning its "contents" came from a person with a specific goal in mind.
as for AI, its data isn't always ethically sources and we have no way of telling what was taken from where. when that's the case its better to be safe and assume it was unethically sourced. someone may type in an ai prompt giving it direction but that unknown factor creates hate and/or fear.

this nullifies the "because its lazy" argument, because so isn't downloading a bunch of images from the internet. but strengthens the "because the training data might be stolen" argument. where as you know where the images and assets came from. from human hands